Conservatism Isn't
Dead

By Daniel Greenfield
SultanKnish.Blogspot.com

No, conservatism isn't dead. It just isn't nearly as
influential as some conservatives thought it was.

This shouldn't have come as a surprise after two
Obama victories, the failures of the Tea Party and
the warping of conservative institutions and
politicians to serve entirely different agendas.
Ideas only have power when they're vested in
organizations that have power. Conservative
organizations have very little institutional power.
Those that do are not particularly conservative, but
serve the agendas of an establishment that has
self-interested goals.

Conservative organizations lean heavily on
messaging, but their messaging is really about
influencing those who do have power. Their most
effective messaging is filtered through populist and
viral mediums that have the conservative brand, but
are not really ideologically conservative.

Conservatives interface with FOX News or the Chamber
of Commerce, which have institutional power and
which provide a forum for conservative views, but
which are not really conservative. The perception
that they are waters down the brand and undermines
the idea of conservatism.

Conservative overconfidence grew under Obama, but
opposition to Obama was far more popular than any
set of conservative ideas. Opposition to Obama
became its own movement, but it didn't stand for
anything. It was a populist movement that was
against things and looking for someone to lead.

Meanwhile conservatism became the victim of its own
successes. The establishment crippled and then
cannibalized the Tea Party. Conservatives finally
emerged triumphant in a pitched battle with the
establishment over amnesty. But the battle mainly
served to discredit both sides in the eyes of a base
that had seen a parade of former conservative heroes
being exposed as villains.

And conservatism came in for a tug of war between
established interests, intellectuals and the grass
roots. There were and still are debates over what
conservative principles really are. This election
has shown that social conservatism and nationalism
should be strong parts of a conservative platform.

The libertarian conservatism popular in some circles
that packages together immigration, pro-crime
policies and cutting social security is vastly
unpopular and has no political base of support. This
election has completely discredited it and it should
be abandoned as soon as possible.

If conservatives want to win elections, their
platform is going to have to be populist and
realistic. That means small government, but the cuts
have to start with the left's sacred cows, rather
than expecting the bulk of the Republican electorate
to suck it up for the greater good. I would love to
see a conservative candidate announce a plan to stop
plowing more money into failed Democratic cities
instead of announcing yet another bright scheme to
slash the military or Medicare.

Likewise the "exporting Democracy" school of
conservatives were thoroughly discredited by the
Arab Spring. Their agenda is mainstream among the
establishment, but conservatives need a sensible
realistic foreign policy approach that avoids the
extremes of nation building and isolationism, that
puts national interests first while at the same time
recognizing that we are a world power.

Americans have no interest in fighting wars for
futile missions to build democracy. But neither are
they willing to sit around and watch a group like
ISIS take off. What is needed is an approach that
emphasizes decisive military intervention against
enemies without regard for collateral damage while
minimizing American casualties. We should sharply
slash much of our foreign aid budget and look at
what actually builds influence and what doesn't.
Foreign aid should be closely interlinked with our
economic interests, the way that it is in China, and
our international interests. We are not a charity.

A small government, hard power, anti-crime,
nationalist and traditionalist conservatism can
succeed. It has succeeded in this election insofar
as the leading candidates have adopted it, with
varying degrees of sincerity. If conservatism is to
be relevant, it is going to have to shed a lot of
its liberal skin, dispense with the globalism that
has seeped into it, and actually be conservative.

And then it might be ready to win elections.

Without close ties to a grass roots, conservatism
becomes an echo chamber. That's what the National
Review really showed. Building ties to a grass roots
based around negative oppositionism is easy. Anyone
can do it. The hard work will be to build ties to
the grass roots based on a positive agenda.

This is where conservatives failed. Trump just
exposed their failure. Someone can always be more
against X than you are. The specific things that you
are against matter less than the act of opposing.
Being against something is its own truth and
competing in that arena is more a matter of attitude
than policy. And yet Trump has, in his own way, also
laid out a coherent and easy to understand positive
agenda. One of the reasons he's winning is that his
rivals have failed to do it. Trump distills his
agenda into soundbites. The Republican field has
positions that are too complex to boil down.

To the average voter, it's easy to understand what
Trump stands for. It's hard to understand what his
rivals stand for. All the endless articles about
"How to Defeat Trump" completely miss the point.
What his opponents had to do was attack him in a
simple and crude way over and over again while
making the contrast with their own agenda. They
failed to do this. That's why they're losing.

The Republican Party in general suffers from an
inability to communicate its agenda in ways that
people can understand. Conservatives are not immune
from this problem. During the Obama years, they
compensated by doubling down on opposition. But they
haven't produced a positive, coherent agenda that
appeals to people. And they haven't bridged the gap
with ordinary people.

The weak point has always been organization. The
left won based on its organizations. These
organizations have become more integrated than ever.
Meanwhile the right's organizations are vague and
detached, pursuing ambitious goals without a
realistic agenda. The organizations of the right
occasionally suffice to win elections, but they do
not suffice when it comes to making policy.

And they do not suffice at all when it comes to
organizing a populist conservative movement.

Conservative organizations suffer from too much
'insiderism' making it easy for accusations about an
establishment to stick. This insiderism leaves them
at the mercy of the real establishment while
preventing them from fully leveraging the grass
roots to push back at the GOP establishment.

Conservatism needs its intellectuals, but it also
needs its community organizers. We have quite a few
of the former and not nearly enough of the latter.
Conservatives will never achieve any lasting
victories until that changes.

Conservatism isn't dead. It's underdeveloped. It's
in the midst of a pitched internal battle which has
yet to be settled. And it has a huge head and a
small body. That's changing. It's been changing for
decades. But the country doesn't have decades. So
neither do conservatives.

Conservatives did achieve key goals. They pushed
Congress to the right. They hurt the establishment.

Conservatives had managed to rally an opposition,
while vastly overestimating their ability to set the
larger agenda. This is a setback, not a curtain call
for the movement. And setbacks are a learning
opportunity.

A conservatism disconnected from actual people is
never going to mean anything. Unpopular policies are
a self-evident dead end. And organizing an
opposition is not the same thing as proving you have
the right to replace the thing you're opposing.
Among other things, that means cleaning house and
having less tolerance for scandals and corruption.
It also means becoming less dependent on
non-conservative populist acts that blow with the
wind to convey conservative messages.

Conservatives have revolutionary ideas. But they let
the opportunity at building a revolution slip away
leaving behind a dissatisfied base. That mistake
cannot and should not be made a second time.